censorship

Salon recently featured an article (Salon.com) about a study (PDF) that reveals how Facebook monitors self-censorship by tracking everytime we type something, even if we decide not to post it. While it is understandable that people are concerned with this tracking of information that we do not share, I believe it is also important for us to understand that Facebook is not a free service. We pay for the opportunity to use this service by providing our precious data. Therefore, it is Facebook’s goal to gather and retain as much data as possible, even if that data is never explicitly shared.

Though I do not agree with their practices, as I am an advocate for the user and users rights when it comes to their data, I do understand them and contend that it is within their right to do this – even if it is an unsavory practice to perform. As a user, your rights and your power lay solely within the choice to use the product. If you want to retain ownership over your data, sharing it on a service where you provide said data for payment of using the service, is likely not the wisest choice. Keep that in mind when you type anything into any text box anywhere on the web, because as this example proves, that data may be saved even if you hit cancel.

“I am against censorship. In all forms. Not just for the right of masterpieces — high art — to be scandalous.

But what about pornography (commercial)?Find the wider context:notion of voluptuousness à la Bataille?But what about children? Not even for them? Horror comics, etc.Why forbid them comics when they can read worse things in the newspapers any day. Napalm bombing in Vietnam, etc.

“Communist authorities equally understood Elvis’s subversive manner, even as an Army private.When it was announced that Presley was bound for the U.S. base at Friedberg, the East German Communist Party accused the United States of plotting to undermine the morals of Red youth,’ Karal Ann Marling relates. ‘To show that this act of provocation would not be tolerated, party boss Walter Ulbricht ordered the arrest and imprisonment of fifteen teenagers who marched through the streets of Leipzig in 1959 shouting, ‘Long live Elvis Presley!’” (p. 268)

Cohen, R. D. (1997). The delinquents: Censorship and youth culture in recent US history. History of Education Quarterly, 37(3), 251-270.

“Rather than simply forbiddingyoung peopleto listen to certainforms of music,read certainbooks, or seecertainmovies, many families haveabdicated this responsibility tocivic action groups andthe government.Such arelinquishmentofauthorityoverindividualliveshasledtodenunciations ofvariousmedia forms, callsforself-regulation ofindividualmediums, andattemptsto ban completely some sexually explicitspeech.” (791)”Perhaps even more important than therightofAmericans to decide whattheywish to read, see, and hear for themselvesisthe factthat thisgeneration’s purity crusade is diverting national attention away from more important areas. Indeed, many individuals who believe in a government based on popular participation have not yet realizedthatby devoting so much energy to what is essentially the private business of American citizens,theirattention has been successfully diverted from participation in the political and economic planning processesofthenation.” (850)

Interesting that if you consider gaming, specifically violent video games, to be the topic at hand, these conclusions are as relevant today as they were over 20 years ago.

And there’s also the issue that Google’s pull-out of China might make the overall human rights situation slightly worse. Because whether or not you approve of Google, while it was operating in China it was pushing for relaxations of censorship–using its size as a global giant to try to lever open some cracks in the censorship wall. And if it leaves the country, then what’s to stop the Chinese government running roughshod over any other players in the Internet tech game–likely far smaller ones than mighty Google–and forcing them to comply?

Australia’s laws on Internet censorship are, theoretically, amongst the most restrictive in the Western world. However, the restrictive nature of the laws has been combined with almost complete lack of interest in enforcement from the agencies responsible . [src]

With this renewed interest in censorship and the want to establish a nationwide filter I have a few questions that I feel should be asked and answers made public and accessible (written to a level that everyone can understand and made available to everyone through an effort by the government) before this is established.

1) What is the goal and what is the end result the government is hoping to achieve by establishing nationwide censorship? Does the ends (a safer population) justify the means ($44.2 million dollars)? How are they going to measure the effectiveness of this? Have they done any research in this area? If so, who performed it and what were their findings? If not what are they basing this idea on?

2) Who determines what is to be censored? What right do they have to determine it? And by whose standards are they doing so?

3) Have they really determined the effectiveness of the software? What sites get accidentally caught in the crossfire? Is there a way to tell when you’ve been blacklisted? Is there any way to fight being blacklisted?

It has been mentioned that they want to block things like access to pro-anorexia groups, but does the software have the intelligence to tell the difference from a pro-ani group and a support group for those who have suffered through anorexia? Or does it just search out the term ‘anorexia’ and ban any access to it?

# All filters tested had problems with under-blocking, allowing access to between 2% and 13% of material that they should have blocked; and
# All filters tested had serious problems with over-blocking, wrongly blocking access to between 1.3% and 7.8% of the websites tested. [src]

4) How does this effect social networking sites where the content on the site is user generated? Consider YouTube videos, Livejournal communities, MySpace pages, Facebook, as well as dating sites.

5) Will this have any affect on gaming such as MMOs or services like Xbox Live or Playstation Online?

6) Unsure as to how they will actually implement this have they assessed the costs of not only establishing it, but supporting it and upgrading it over the years? By how much will access to the net be slowed down due to this filtering put in place and is it worth it?

# One filter caused a 22% drop in speed even when it was *not* performing filtering;
# Only one of the six filters had an acceptable level of performance (a drop of 2% in a laboratory trial), the others causing drops in speed of between 21% and 86%;
# The most accurate filters were often the slowest [src]

Who ultimately suffers here and is that the intended target? I just don’t see any good that comes of censorship unless you option to do so for yourself. I can see why families may want a ‘clean feed’ but they should be the ones to establish that for themselves through the use of their own filters software and hardware to do so. If the government has a burning need to use all that money why don’t they offer vouchers or something to that effect for those families who wish to participate? I understand that there is a split level in filtering and the only one that is nationwide is the illegal content filter, however, even in that respect it doesn’t seem feasible to be able to provide the hardware, software and man hours necessary to keep up with the sites especially when it comes at such a high bandwidth performance cost.

This is something I intend to keep up with in the coming months to see what comes of it. If it wasn’t so far away, I’d petition to do research for them as part of my practicum.

For more information from an Australian point of view check out the EFA site.

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#Research this week reinforced this. Everyone has a hack. Embrace the hacks and figure out how to incorporate them into your product. #ux5 days ago